Last February, The City University of New York (CUNY) announced that it will be centralizing its discrimination and harassment policies and processes across its 26 colleges by implementing the Center for Inclusivity and Equal Opportunity (CIEO).
Following a CUNY Board of Trustees vote to create it in June 2024, the Center was launched to foster understanding, harness systemwide resources, oversee training and strengthen reporting and policy according to CUNY.
CIEO is an effort to create consistency and accountability across CUNY campuses.
“Hate has no place at The City University of New York, which is why we have streamlined the reporting system, creating an improved investigation process that enables us to better track incidents and keep members of our community secure and informed,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez.
“We also want to prevent incidents from occurring in the first place, so we’ve instituted mandatory Title VI training and expanded programming to prepare our community for difficult conversations. Taken together, these efforts reflect CUNY’s ongoing commitment to maintaining a safe environment where people can express differing views respectfully.”
CUNY has made the reporting process simple and efficient. Anyone at CUNY who has experienced or witnessed discrimination, harassment or retaliation is urged to submit a report through the University’s Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation Reporting Form. Furthermore, information on services are available on the Center’s web page. The Center will not only affect students—starting this year, CUNY has mandatory Title VI training for all full-time faculty and staff. The initiative does not end there. CUNY is partnering with the Constructive Dialogue Initiative (CDI) to train students, faculty and staff on how to navigate difficult conversations. Throughout 2026, each of CUNY’s 26 colleges will work with CDI to deploy trained facilitators across the system—demonstrating their efforts to improve the CUNY experience.
However, many students remain unaware of CUNY’s efforts to combat discrimination. One year after the Center’s announcement, Jamil Pandey, president of the Black Student Union at Queens College, told The Knight News, “It’s not being discussed in student circles. It’s not something we’ve talked about as much.”
Although some students are not fully aware of the Center’s resources, Pandey remains optimistic about the future of CUNY. “My hope is that this will create a space where students can feel safe, and be more likely to ask for help or report issues where they were discriminated against.” The Center appears to be well received by those who are informed; the challenge is connecting with those who are not.
As CUNY moves into its first full year with the centralized model, the conversation is no longer just about how the system works, but who it works for. Pandey has some feedback for the Center’s director: “Make more noise about it and make it more public. Students look at flyers frequently and you can post more about it on Instagram. Sharing it with more students would make it more known and effective.”
